OpenAI’s latest working paper, published via the National Bureau of Economic Research, reveals that 52% of ChatGPT users are women, reversing an earlier dominance by men, who made up about 80% of users in the service’s first months.
The study, based on 1.5 million messages from about 130,000 consumer users between May 2024 and July 2025, shows that users aged 18-25 generate nearly half of all messages. Work-related use is much lower among that age cohort: just 22.5% of their messages concern work, compared with 31.4% among the 36-45 age group.
Across all users, most engagement is non-professional in nature. Roughly 73% of conversations do not involve work or career tasks. Users seek out ChatGPT predominantly for practical guidance such as “how-to” advice, educational help, or lifestyle tips. Writing assistance and information-seeking follow closely. Technical or multimedia-oriented prompts remain a smaller slice.
Differences in usage by gender persist. Users with feminine names are more likely to ask for help in writing and daily practical tasks. Those with masculine names send proportionally more prompts related to technical content, multimedia, or coding.
OpenAI estimates its total weekly active users across all ChatGPT service tiers at around 700 million. The working paper does not include business, enterprise or educational account data, focusing instead on “consumer” users.
Global location distribution is not deeply profiled in the paper, though OpenAI notes an increasing uptake in lower-income countries. The demographic shift and behaviour trends seem consistent across diverse geographies.
Privacy and methodology disclosures indicate that only users who did not opt out and over 18 were included in the sampling. The gender classification was inferred from users’ first names, categorised as typically masculine, feminine or uncertain.
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